1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to broadcast program recorders and particularly to television broadcast program recorders.
2. Description of the Background Art
Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2004-343520 discloses a content recording and reproduction management device including: a storage storing a series management table having recording status information registered therein to indicate for each content broadcasted from its sender whether the content has been recorded; and a controller that registers in the series management table for series contents broadcasted by the sender regularly over a prescribed period of time a series ID indicative of information specifying the series contents and an episode number indicating which episode a series content corresponds to, and that registers the recording status information in the series management table for each episode number. As disclosed in the publication, the series content can be recorded/reproduced without cumbersome user operation and hence readily controlled.
Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2003-319307 discloses a recorder and reproducer including an input device operated to previously set a broadcast program that is recorded in a storage medium, and a display device displaying in a list the information of a broadcast program preselected to be recorded, that of a recorded broadcast program, and other similar information, and the recorder and reproducer is characterized in that the display device displays an identification mark uniquely provided to the broadcast program preselected to be recorded and displays an identification mark for a broadcast program for which update recording is set. As disclosed in the publication, the broadcast program for which updating recording is set can be readily identified.
Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2004-180061 discloses a data recorder and reproducer that has a storage medium recording content at least including coded video data and is capable of recording, reproducing and editing video data. As disclosed in the publication, once recording a broadcast program has been programmed, the broadcast program can be recorded at any interval and content recorded in the storage medium also be updated without user operation.
As disclosed in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2004-343520, however, it is difficult to configure a group of information of a program broadcasted periodically.
Japanese Patent Laying-Open Nos. 2003-319307 and 2004-180061 in the first place fail to consider configuring a group of information of recorded broadcast program.